Caption: Ninety Years of Service

CPR E8A 1802 graces the headend of Train 41, The ATLANTIC LIMITED, at McAdam, New Brunswick, at 10 p.m. on Sunday, June 3, 1979.

The westbound Saint John to Montreal train had covered the 84.4 miles of the McAdam Sub and will depart at 10.10 p.m. It will follow the Canadian Pacific's "Short Line" through northern Maine that had opened to passenger service exactly ninety years before. Note the ninety affixed to the anticlimber. The opening of the 479-mile Short Line made the CPR a line from sea to sea across North America. It was not so until December 1974 when CP Rail purchased the Maine Central line from Mattawamkeag, 56.1 miles to Vanceboro, Maine. Previously, they had enjoyed trackage rights.

E8A 1802 was one of three ordered by the CPR in September 1948 as an E7A to match the diesels of the Boston & Maine on their shared service between Montreal and Boston. The CPR changed the order, so EMD delivered the E8 in December 1949 after E7 production had ended. When RDCs replaced conventionally powered trains on the Boston run in 1959, the CPR transferred the E8s to other routes. Some of these included Toronto - Windsor, Toronto or Montreal to Sudbury and, later, Montreal to Quebec City and Ottawa. As these services wound down and following the demise of 1801 in a collision, the two remaining units found a home for most of the 1970s on the ATLANTIC LIMITED. Their twin boilers and prime movers provided a desirable reserve and ended the usual practice of assigning two units during winter.

The makeup of this train was the same as it had been for most of the 1970s. The four cars included baggage 2767, 4-5-1-4 sleeper GRANT MANOR, Skyline dome 505 and coach 123. On this trip, GRANT MANOR had replaced DRAPER MANOR, which ran with regularly with 505 and 123. Senior conductor George Draper out of Montreal reportedly often arranged its reinstatement when 'his car' was not in the consist. On the other set of equipment was CAMERON MANOR, long associated with baggageman Dave Cameron. This sleeper usually ran eastbound on the rear behind Skyline 515 and coach 119.

The two dome cars were specially fitted with walkover seats in the dome section so that passengers would not have to ride backwards. On the other hand, crews switched, not turned, the cars so that the sleeper ran backwards behind the baggage car on the westbound trip with the coach on the rear. As CP became disenchanted with passenger service in the 1960s, it is remarkable that they did not discontinue the train nor replace it with a Rail Diesel Car. Despite often very low revenue passenger counts, it continued as a full-featured daily train until VIA upgraded it and extended it to Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Sunday, October 28, 1979 as their ATLANTIC.

Behind the train, W. H. Painter's Chateau style station-hotel of 1901 dominates the scene. The station supported the intense traffic generated at the junction of CPR lines to St. Andrews and St. Stephen to the south, and Edmundston to the north. It featured a 20-room hotel on the second floor, station services on the ground floor including a restaurant and coffee shop behind the E8. The Canadian government designated the station as a National Historic Site in 1976 and a Heritage Railway Station in 1990.